


wrap around my throat (like a noose on a rope)

by lachambre11



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Bellarke, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I Don't Even Know, Multi, POV Second Person, faven, past Spacewalker, raven breaks my heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2014-12-28
Packaged: 2018-03-04 01:49:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2904887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lachambre11/pseuds/lachambre11
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"In those dreams, you say <i>I’ll do anything for you</i>, and he answers, a hint of a smile on his lips, <i>I think you’ve done enough.</i>" </p><p>- </p><p>Raven Reyes grieves. It isn't pretty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wrap around my throat (like a noose on a rope)

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a happy story, in any shape or form. Also, spoilers for 2.08, if that's still possible. Second person POV, un-beta-ed.

**1.**

 

They burn his body down instead of burying it. You’re the one who wanted it, argued about it; made it your mission to make sure it happens. It was the last nice thing you could do for him, the one promise you can manage to keep.

 

He hadn’t wanted to be floated, back in the Ark. He said he wanted a fire, like those old ritual from the legends, and you had laughed back then because it was ridiculous, because you were both so young and his death was ways off, because this was before he had saved your life for the second time around, before you had to envision your future without him in it, before you had to actually see it happen.

 

-

 

This is how you spend the day after she kills him – picking flowers in the woods.

 

They are supposed to decorate his boat, his final place of resting. But, actually, it’s the only gesture that you can think of doing that comes close to an apology, now that he no longer hears you. You hope that he sees the flowers, wherever he is, and that he knows they came from you.

 

It’s a shitty goodbye, but it’s the only one you get to have.

 

-

 

The tears are long gone and there’s an inferno burning between your lungs, but there’s time for that later. You can hate later. You can make them pay later. This moment is supposed to be about him, about giving him what he wanted. This will be the last time you’ll see his face in this life, his real face, not the one distorted by time and a faulty memory.

 

So you breathe in, breathe out, and you let it go of everything else but him for now.

 

-

You light the fire and you watch him burn, watch until you can no longer see the boat, or smell the smoke. You watch until the flame gets put out and he turns to dust.

 

Then you allow yourself to hate.

  

**2.**

 

 _It was an act of kindness,_ Bellamy tells you, and you wish that he was close enough so that you could scratch his eyes out or at least punch him in the face.

 

 _It was an act of cowardice_ , you spit back, with enough venom to shut him up.

 

He doesn’t try to talk you into forgiving her after that.

 

**3.**

 

Your anger is reasonable, you think.

 

She’s the one who took him away from you in a million different ways before she did it for the last time.

 

She was the one that failed to rescue him, to protect him, after you had begged her to, after she had _promised._

Your anger is anything but misplaced.

 

**4.**

 

You see her laugh once, with Bellamy, several months later. Her eyes are soft, and there's something between them that hasn't been there before. Not this clearly.

 

It feels like a betrayal, all over again. It's almost as painful as the night you saw her kiss him goodbye as he took his last breath.

 

It's been months, and you still can’t laugh. He can never laugh again. She shouldn’t get to either.

 

**5.**

 

You wear his absence like a badge of honor. His jacket with his name stitched on it, the necklace he gave you almost two years ago.

 

You stare at her with nothing but violence and defiance, and she keeps her distance, even though you can feel her eyes following you everywhere you go.

 

You’ll be damned if you will let her forget that his blood are still on her hands anytime soon.

 

**6.**

 

You dream about him all the time.

 

At first, on the first few weeks right after his murder, those dreams were all soft, yellow-colored memories of your time together. Growing up together, planning out your whole lives. Falling in love, then out of love, but still finding family in each other.

You dream about having a house on Earth, and of having a family. He’s always there, and the children always have his smile. It’s surprisingly nice. You wake up with his name on your lips and tears running down your face.

 

-

 

But those dreams stop, eventually.

 

Nowadays, he’s always there, in his boat, burning, going, gone. His smile is a mockery of what it was, and he’s still dead, but his eyes lit up like a lighthouse. Sometimes he comes close enough to touch, enough so that you can feel the flames licking at your heart, and he whispers over and over again _watch me, just watch me_.

 

You wake up drenched in sweat, with the ghost of his laughter on your ears.

 

It sounds cruel, like it had never been before.

 

It sounds fitting.

 

-

 

Her hands might’ve been the ones that lodge the knife on the soft, vulnerable skin between his ribs and hips, but yours hands were the ones that gave her the power to put it there on the first place.

 

Sometimes you wake up and you think you smell blood. You check your hands, and there’s nothing there, really, but you can still feel it.

 

His time running out.

 

**7.**

 

The dead don’t forgive, you heard once.

 

You hope that’s true. You don’t want to be forgiven anyway.

 

You don’t want to forget.

 

**8.**

Try as you might, anger is not the only thing you feel. At first, you’re empty, nothing but a shiny ball of hatred and blame. Then, as the day goes by and you can’t see him anywhere, but still sees him everywhere, it finally hits you.

 

Never again, you can see his smile.

 

Never again, he will say _Raven_ in that half-exasperated, half-fond tone of his.

 

Never again he'll be there by your side, ready to lay down his life for you.

 

You don’t have the energy to blame anyone for that anymore. Not even her.

 

Not even you.

 

There’s no relief in knowing you no longer owe him anything too, because now there’s no one there to owe something to. There’s no one there that knows you inside and out anymore, knows how you’re especially grumpy in the mornings, or how you like having someone playing with your hair until you fall asleep.

 

There’s not a single soul who knows how you got that scar on your left knee, or the fact that you can repeat the laws of thermodynamics under your breath when you’re nervous. There’s no one who knows what May, 8th means to you, no one that knows why you can’t stand the smell of moonshine and vomit.

 

You’re the sole guardian of your own history.

 

It’s equally heartbreaking and terrifying.

 

**9.**

 

Some days you can’t bother to get up, to face a life where he isn't in it. Some days you want to punish someone, wants to hate him, or maybe scream until your throat feels raw.

 

Until you feel something other than dead _._

 

_-_

 

Most days, you struggle. You struggle to pull away from the dreams where he shows up, even the ones where you get to watch him die all over again, the ones when you say _I’ll do anything for you_ , and he answers, a hint of a smile on his lips,  _I think_ _you’ve done enough._

You struggle to catch your breath, and you struggle to put on your leg brace and limp around the camp. You struggle to focus on your work, to remember that even though he’s dead, you’re still very much alive. It’s hard to remember that sometimes.

 

You try to fix things, but the one thing you couldn’t fix is never far from you mind.

 

You tinker and puts things apart just to put them back together, and these are the good days, the days you get things right, when you almost feel normal again.

 

Sometimes you do something amazing, and it feels great, and you forget for a minute that he’s not there anymore, and that it was partly your fault. These are the days when you turn around, brimming with excitement, and say: _hey, Finn, look_ , but there is no one there when you stop talking.

 

-

 

Then you go to sleep and start all over again.

 

**10.**

 

You start to count the days, partly as a way to mark the passage of time, partly as a way to keep yourself sane. They are starting to blur together, one big chunk of time when all you do is miss him, avoid her, blame yourself. 

 

It’s been an eighty nights since you had touched his hands.

 

It’s been a year since you had kissed him, since he held you in his arms. Spring comes, then leaves, and then it comes again.

 

By now, you’ve spent more time missing him on Earth than actually being there with him.

 

By now, everybody has moved on to other fights, other hurts, other lovers. There’s always something to do around camp, and his name is a memory that leaves a bittersweet taste in her mouth, a tale whispered to the children, passed down by the firelight, meant to teach them a lesson - the delinquent who walked amongst the starts, lost his mind and paid the price of peace with life.

 

 _Blood must have blood_ , the children whisper, wide-eyed and somber at the wake of his story. 

 

 _Blood must have blood_ , is the lesson there. You hope it sticks.

 

They are all Grounders now, after all.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know, guys... I tried to get into Raven's headspace after Finn died, and this is what it came out. That girl breaks my heart. I hope I've done her justice. I don't agree about a lot of things she thinks here. Also, I don't hate Clarke - she and Raven are the newest loves of my life. Please be kind, and review! I love to hear from you.
> 
> Inspired by the poem 'straw house, straw dog', by Richard Siken, and the song 'the predatory wasp of the palisades it's out to get us', by Sufjan Stevens. The line "I can't explain the state that I'm in, the state of my heart - he was my best friend" get me every time.


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